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Facebook's News Tab to Feature News Corp Headlines

Facebook on Friday confirmed that some stories from News Corp, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, will be available at a new "tab" planned at the leading social network.

"People want to see high quality news on Facebook," co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. "I'm excited we'll have the opportunity to include award-winning journalism from The Wall Street Journal -- and other US News Corp properties -- in our news tab."

Zuckerberg did not provide any details about the agreement.

Facebook said last month that it plans to pay only a portion of the publishers whose stories appear in a news tab set to launch in the weeks ahead.

The WSJ had earlier reported that news publications Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, and Business Insider have also reached a similar deal with Facebook.

"The number of publishers included in the news tab will grow over time," Facebook spokeswoman Mari Melguizo said in a statement.

"To ensure we're including a range of topic areas, we'll start by paying a subset of publishers who can provide a steady volume of fact-based and original content."

The tab will be separate from the trademark news feed at Facebook that displays updates and content from people's friends. Responsible for what will appear in the News Tab will be seasoned journalists. However, the tab will also rely on algorithms to figure out a user's interests based on "signals" such as pages followed, interactions with online news or subscriptions to publications.